Joey Clift, an enrolled member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, has spent most of his life explaining everything Native. Those experiences and more led him to writing a comedic take on a Native history book. Now he’s coming to Tulsa to talk about it — and bringing a slate of local comics with him.
Magic City Books is hosting the celebration for “We’ve Been Here the Whole Time!: A Not So Sacred Guide to All Things Native America.” The free event starts at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Good Cause Brewing, 2501 E. 15th St.
The book released Oct. 6 and became an instant bestseller. The first two printings of the book have sold out and it is now back ordered, according to Clift.
“Copies out in the wild are pretty rare right now, so if you want one and you’re Oklahoma-based, I recommend picking one up from Magic City or Green Feather Book Company,” Clift said. “They’ve got a bunch in stock and even if you can’t make these events, I intend on signing every copy they have left over, which is even more reason to buy the book from those places.”
The event begins with sets from Native comedians Kels Cooper (Cherokee Nation), Brent Deo (Muscogee Nation) and Shea Vassar (Cherokee Nation). Then, Clift will be in conversation with Choctaw filmmaker Colleen Thurston.
The Los Angeles-based comedian, TV writer, director, Peabody and Emmy-nominated producer and Webby-winner spoke with the Flyer ahead of his visit to discuss the origins of his book and more.
Congrats on the success of your book out the gate! Tell me about how it came to be. Did the writing/publishing process go as expected?
I’ve been cracking jokes about the modern day Native experience in a public way since the first episode of my Comedy Central digital series “Gone Native” came out in 2019. I’ve heard from a lot of teachers and college professors since then that my work makes learning about this stuff really accessible, and is one of the first things they show students in classes that cover Native history and culture (which is crazy!). Between that, and my experience writing on shows like “Spirit Rangers,” “Paw Patrol,” “Molly of Denali” and “Smartypants” on Dropout, writing an entire comedy textbook about Native history, people and culture felt like my destiny. I loved “The Onion” and “The Daily Show” growing up, and it was so fun to poke at Native history with a similar satirical blade.
I’ve been asked weird questions from non-Natives about Native issues for as long as I can remember. For example, a freshman at the college I went to, immediately after finding out that I’m Native, asked me “why do you get to vote in United States elections?” It’s wild and exhausting work, and is also super fertile ground for jokes! Once my editor at Andrews McMeel Publishing and I started chatting about this book’s contents and settled on an outline, it came out like water from a faucet.
The first draft only took a month and a half to write, but I’d spent a lifetime thinking about, and experiencing the info gap that non-Native people have when it comes to Native issues, so it’s not too surprising to me that it came out that easy.
What do you hope readers take away from your book?
I hope that, as a baseline, what people take away from the book is that Native people are still here and that we rock. Aside from that, I hope that the book gives people a basic “Indian 101” level of understanding about North American Indigenous people. Oftentimes, we’re stuck having such basic conversations about our identity.
Conversations like “is Thanksgiving weird for you?” “How do you feel about the Atlanta Braves?” “What do we call you? Indians or Native Americans?” Answering those questions takes up valuable time and energy that could be used having actual conversations of substance about current Indigenous issues like the Landback movement, the Murdered and Missing Indigenous People epidemic, the lack of water infrastructure on the Navajo Nation, etc.
By creating an accessible and funny primer, I hope the book raises the bar of what non-Natives know about us, and undoes a lot of the ignorance or purposefully inaccurate misconceptions people have about Indigenous people. Additionally, I hope the book causes people to support their local tribes, and pay attention to Indigenous issues in their private, professional and political lives.
For Natives, I hope the book is cathartic, and that it gives Natives and non-Native allies an easy call to action for their friends, classmates and coworkers. Instead of having to have another conversation about sports mascots, my hope is people just suggest this book, which gives a comprehensive education about Native people and issues that is fun to read and anyone can buzz through in an afternoon. I joke in the book that this would be “a great passive aggressive gift for your non-Native coworker who keeps calling meetings powwows.”
And finally, I hope people reading this book laugh. A lot. It’s a comedy textbook after all!
I’ve moderated many Magic City Books events, and this is a unique setup with Native stand-up comedy acts preceding your talk with Native filmmaker Colleen Thurston. Is this a standard setup for you or is this unique to your visit to Tulsa?
“We’ve Been Here The Whole Time” is my first book, and my first tour! I want every event to feel dynamic, fun and worth going to. My book release show earlier this month wasn’t at a bookstore, it was a sold-out show at one of Los Angeles’ coolest comedy theaters featuring a bill packed with Native comedians. Last week I had an event at a bookstore in Portland where the opener for the event was the awesome “powwow punk” band 1876. Having a punk concert in a bookstore was so fun and the place was packed!
On Friday, I’ve got an event at Native-owned bookstore Green Feather Book Company in Norman, which is a panel about storytelling featuring myself, as well as Angela Startz and Chelsea T. Hicks, two of my favorite Native storytellers, followed by an in-store reception for the community.
Instead of a boring book reading, I wanted to make sure that all of my events felt a little more live and reflective of the area where the event takes place. Tulsa has so many funny Native comedians, like Kels Cooper, Brent Deo and Shea Vasser. If I’m releasing a Native history comedy book in Tulsa, it just feels right to have some killer Native Oklahoma comedians on the bill.
I say this a lot in the book, but I’m just one person with my own opinions and I don’t speak for everyone, so I want to use the tour as an opportunity to uplift as many other super talented Native points of view as I can.
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